The Conspiracy Theorist

by Mark Raven

  An hour later, I had given a statement to DI Spittieri with Anthony Carstairs present and was ready to leave when DCI Richie turned up. He was not in his motorcycle outfit this time, which was a pity as I have a soft spot for fancy dress. He read my statement seriously. It was nothing that I had not told the police in Chichester, except I had accounted for my movements the previous evening. No doubt, sooner or later, someone in Kent Constabulary would check out whether I had sat in a pub for five hours drinking one expensive single malt whisky after another. I said some of this, but Anthony Carstairs had put his hand on my arm. It reminded me that I had his reputation to think of as well as my own.

  Richie asked, ‘So you think the men who mugged you also murdered Lee Herbert?’

  ‘And Sir Simeon Marchant.’

  He sighed. Spittieri looked confused.

  Richie said to him, ‘This is Becket’s conspiracy theory. No one else’s.’

  ‘Have you done a PM on Herbert?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s in the queue,’ Spittieri said.

  ‘Get them to check for Haloperidol.’

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked. I watched a flicker of interest pass over Richie’s face before he looked away.

  ‘It is what they gave me. It slows you down. Means you can’t fight back. Can’t think. Get them to test for it. H-a-l-o-p-e-r-i-d-o-l.’

  Spittieri made a note.

  Richie stood, ‘Here we go again. Get him out of here.’

  Spittieri didn’t look too pleased. Richie said he would brief him in private. I was about to say something. I wasn’t sure what—always a bad sign—but probably something to do with not being too pleased about being a murder suspect either. Once again, Carstairs put his hand on my arm. And I shut up before I made it worse. We stood to leave, but Richie had to have the final word.

  ‘You look after yourself, Becket,’ he said. ‘We wouldn’t want you going mental again.’

  It was dark. Anthony insisted on driving me home. The deep, leather seats of the Jag made me want to weep with gratitude. We parked outside my flat.

  ‘Perhaps, you’re wondering what Richie meant?’ I asked.

  ‘It was a despicable thing to say,’ Anthony said.

  He continued staring ahead.

  ‘You already knew,’ I said. ‘Meg?’

  He nodded. A minute passed.

  ‘Did she tell you how it got me?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, she didn’t.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t like this. I realised I was powerless. I couldn’t stop crying. It was as if it was the only thing I could do.’

  I was a vessel leaking tears, sneezing tears, tears ripped from me in great anguished cries...

  ‘It was nothing like this, Anthony.’

  ‘Tom, I can’t imagine what it was like...’

  I had a momentary vision of his daughter on a pony as it jumped a red-and-white barred fence.

  I shook his hand and got out.

  Sometimes it is better to say nothing.

  The flat felt different. I wandered about a bit, drawing curtains, putting the kettle on, checking the fridge, normal stuff. But it did no good. Nothing did any good.

  So I rang Meg.

  ‘You told Carstairs. About us. About Clara.’

  I was gasping. It no longer sounded like me.

  ‘Calm down, Thomas! He asked me. He was concerned,’ she said. ‘What is strange is that you do not tell your friends.’

  ‘Oh no, what is strange is having Hammonde crawling all over your emotions and then propositioning you. That is really strange! And hardly ethical either.’

  ‘Thomas, I'm going to put the phone down now.’

  Neither of us said anything. But she didn’t put the phone down. A minute ticked by.

  I could hear my own breathing echoing back at me.

  ‘Meg?’

  ‘Yes?’

  She sounded calm. No tears. I hated her for it. I hated her strength.

  ‘I told them about the Haloperidol. I told the police.’

  She sighed as if I had missed the point.

  ‘Now you will leave it, right? Tom? It is really not good for your health.’

  ‘Perhaps I should stick to matrimonial cases...’

  ‘Your record is not so good on them either.’

  I laughed politely. I didn’t feel like it, but I wanted to erase the memory of my anger with her.

  ‘So, you’re giving up?’

  It was a question she had asked me once before. A long time ago.

  ‘Yes, I’m giving up.’

  Next I rang Jenny Forbes-Marchant’s mobile. I expected to get her answerphone but she took it. There was a hubbub of chatter in the background, the clink of glasses like she was in a pub or restaurant. She sounded guarded and then apologised for not recognising my landline number. She was at some dreary private view, and needed to find a quiet corner.

  I heard her heels click on the parquet or whatever it was. I imagined her in full sail and almost regretted what I had to say to her.

  ‘So how are you?’ she asked. ‘The police came and took my statement. They said you were mugged but you were all right.’

  ‘Just a few cuts and bruises. And they got your £500, by the way.’

  ‘I see.’

  I am always surprised by people saying that, when they don’t. See, that is.

  ‘No, I’m not calling to ask you to replace it. It was my fault I lost it.’

  She sounded relieved. ‘The police contacted Mark to see if he knew the serial numbers.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘I don’t know. He flew out that night. After the theatre. He has such a busy life.’

  Casually I asked, ‘Oh, what does he do?’

  ‘He’s in security. Big companies, that sort of thing. Lots of travelling. But he’ll be back for the funeral...’

  She trailed off again, interrupted. I waited. I heard her greet someone; call them ‘darling’ in the generic sense. Kisses were exchanged.

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘Look, Jenny, I can hear you’re busy...’

  ‘No, it is fine, really.’

  ‘So, the funeral. Your father’s body has been released?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all over thank god. We can lay him to rest. This Friday. The thirteenth.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘No more conspiracy theories, Tom?’

  I think it was a question, but it was hard to tell.

  ‘Not from me,’ I said. ‘The case is over for me.’

  ‘Well,’ she sighed. ‘We must have dinner sometime. When you’re up in Town.’

  ‘Great! I’ll ring you when I'm next up.’

  ‘It’s date,’ she laughed. ‘Whenever it is!’

  ‘Goodbye,’ I cooed. ‘See you soon, I hope. Jenny.’

  I put the receiver down. I had said what I wanted to say. The cooing was for whoever was listening in. It was important for them to think my motives were thoroughly ignoble.

  My final call was mobile-to-mobile, although I suspected that line would be tapped as well. He picked up immediately, as if he was on call.

  ‘It’s Thomas Becket,’ I said.

  ‘The martyr,’ he said.

  ‘Has DCI Richie been in touch?’

  ‘Look, I thought this was over, man. I thought you were gonna leave things be.’

  ‘That’s what I'm ringing about. Someone is not leaving things be.’

  I explained about the death of Lee Herbert. Someone was covering their tracks, getting rid of witnesses, and I thought it might be of interest to him. He listened patiently. I had the sense he did not really believe me, but he was obliged to listen.

  ‘Okay, I get the message, Becket. Bad people might come for Darren and Dee. We’re onto it. And thanks, but Becket?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Stay out of it. I have the feeling you’re the sort of person who just makes things worse.’

  ‘That’s gratitude for you.’

  ‘I said thanks. And I
mean it. Just...’

  ‘I know: ‘stay out of it’... Don’t worry I will. I have had enough of the whole thing.’

  ‘Right,’ he said.

  The best thing was that Reuben Symonds sounded disappointed. It almost made my day.

  But, all the same, it had been a bad one.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Paranoia means being out of your mind. Literally: para ‘beyond’, noia ‘the mind’. The medical definition is linked to conditions like schizophrenia and a whole Pandora’s Box of symptoms you would not wish on your worst enemy. Of course, paranoia is also a symptom itself, of diseases like Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, including those affecting the young. In common parlance it suggests having unfounded or exaggerated fears, but also having some control over the process. There is always something pejorative about being called ‘paranoid’. That it is somehow your own fault, a self-indulgence in that you see a sinister reason behind an everyday action; where a normal person sees coincidence, someone suffering from paranoia sees a plan, a conspiracy.

  I knew all that, but the next day, I read up on paranoia in the office, where I assumed my internet access was not compromised, and then in the public library where they still had things called ‘books’. I read about conspiracy theories till I was sick of them, and suspected an evil cabal of publishers was responsible for promoting mass paranoia.

  Routine is everything when you are under surveillance. So I had gone into Hunt and Carstairs despite having no caseload that week, and I made some phone calls to indicate ‘a return to normalcy’ on the part of Becket. My final feeble effort at legerdemain was a message to Anthony Carstairs’ mobile—I knew he was in court and wouldn’t be able to answer—that gave the impression that I was working on something of his that needed me to go to the Public Records Office in Canterbury. From there, I hopped out of the back door, down a back alley or two to the city wall, and the East station. Thence, the slow train to London.

  No one followed me. Of course, no one might have been following me at all. I might not have been tracked, and it was a complete waste of time leaving my mobile blinking away on a metal shelf in the Public Records Office.

  There were a total of nineteen stations between Canterbury East and my destination, not counting the change at Victoria—where I paid paranoid cash for a pay-as-you-go mobile—and we stopped at all of them. Most I had never heard of.

  I read a little to kill the time. Then I sat between carriages and used the free wifi ‘available for first class customers’. I reread the Times obit of Sir Simeon Marchant, cross-checked it against other information on the man in the public domain—apparently he was known as the Navy’s ‘first computer admiral’—and even stumbled on a reference to Jenny Forbes-Marchant’s gallery. I suspected the old man had stumped up some of the cash for the place. It could not have been cheap.

  Either that or her husband. It was hard to find out anything about Peter Forbes—it was too common a name—not quickly anyway. Perhaps that was why Jenny called herself Forbes-Marchant. Or maybe that was just after the divorce. I didn’t know. Part of me didn’t care. The rest of me had lost the will to live a long time ago. Surfing the internet does that to you.

  Of Mark Marchant too, there was very little information. I even tried Google South Africa, but only got his listing as a director for a company called REsurance. Then the train lost power, the internet connection went down, and we were stranded at Gatwick for half an hour.

  I returned to my seat and nodded off to the distant thunder of aeroplanes taking off.

  That’s 3 hours 52 minutes of your life you’ll never get back, Becket, I thought as we pulled into Chichester station.

  But at least it had given me plenty of time to think.

  Gone was the sleepiness of the last few days; the desire for pills and alcohol. Somehow, being accused of murder, however half-heartedly, had galvanised me into action. The continual probing from Richie and his friends had the exact opposite of the effect they hoped to achieve. I was more committed than ever to getting to the bottom of the whole mess. Call it paranoia if you want, I thought. Call it conspiracy theory, if you want. I don’t care.

  Go on, I thought, just call it what you want.

  Mat Janovitz was still on a ventilator. It didn’t suit him. When he woke up, I would tell him that he really was not cut out for this line of work. He didn’t even get beaten up that well. The nurse on duty remembered me as his co-victim, took no absolutely interest in my stitches, but brought me that universal panacea of the NHS, a cup of weak tea.

  I sat in a high-backed chair and gazed up at her. I have always enjoyed looking at nurses. Meg had been one when we met.

  ‘So, I hear you’re both private detectives?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, he is. I’m a legal investigator.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, rapt with inattention. ‘Another of your colleagues came to see him. But the doctor sent him away.’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Singh?’

  ‘No, no. Not the police. Another detective, like you.’

  ‘As I said I’m...’

  But she was gone. I was alone, not even CCTV for company, so I checked the bedside cabinet. It was locked—an unfortunate necessity in hospitals these days—but fortunately easily opened.

  I got what I needed and closed the drawer just as Detective Sergeant Singh walked in.

  He was sporting a sky-blue turban and did not seem surprised to see me there.

  ‘Coventry City,’ I said. ‘Like it.’

  He pointed to his head. ‘What this? I'm a Villan actually.’

  ‘Aston Villa, a noble club. You beat us the other week.’

  ‘Arsenal.’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘The only team we’ve beat this season,’ he said. ‘So it’s memorable.’

  Football bonding over, he nodded over at Janovitz.

  ‘I thought he was awake.’

  ‘They said he’s had a relapse, but is stable.’

  ‘Anyway, I'm glad I’ve seen you,’ Singh said, not sounding glad at all. ‘I need to get you to sign your statement. Are you able to come in to the station?’

  I told him I was booked on the six o’clock train. Then I asked him if Richie had briefed him about what had happened in London.

  ‘Well, I know what happened to Lee Herbert. DI Spittieri called when he saw we were looking for him.’

  ‘Did he mention Haloperidol?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  I nodded at Janovitz.

  ‘Have you interviewed him yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The nurse said someone else came to see him.’

  ‘Shouldn’t have. They need to check with me first. I’ll go and check. Don’t go anywhere.’

  He left. I didn’t go anywhere. I locked the drawer of the bedside cabinet. My arm was beginning to ache from keeping it closed. I patted Janovitz’s leg.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said to him. ‘I’ll bring them back.’

  But he didn’t say anything. He didn’t so much as bat an eyelid.

  Detective Sergeant Singh drove us through the streets of Chichester. The place was similar to Canterbury in many ways—ring road, one-way systems and city walls—not designed for the Age of Petrol. The town planners had done their best to make it as complicated to navigate as possible. None of this fazed DS Singh.

  ‘You used to be a traffic cop,’ I said.

  ‘You can tell?’

  ‘You don’t drive like CID. You haven’t endangered any pedestrians yet.’

  He smiled. ‘I was warned about you.’

  ‘DCI Richie. I bet you’ve seen a few like him in your time on the force.’

  Singh looked ahead. ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘I always thought it was hard for women to get on, but ethnic minorities...’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, cutting me short. ‘It has its advantages. Women still get it worse. Except, of course, women from ethnic minorities.�
��

  He smiled again. I liked his attitude. He had one.

  ‘The Sikhs are a warrior class,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘Remarks like that can get you suspended these days.’

  ‘Good job I’ve left then. What did Richie say?’

  ‘Not to listen to you. Said you have an axe to grind.’

  ‘Several. What do you think was the motivation for the attack?’

  ‘Motivation?’ he paused. ‘It was obviously premeditated. Something to do with Janovitz’s research?’

  ‘You interviewed PiTech?’

  ‘Yes but that doesn’t square with the attack in London.’

  ‘So, there is a link. You do know that Janovitz was in contact with Sir Simeon Marchant?’

  ‘That’s not in your statement.’

  ‘I had just been hit on the head at the time.’

  ‘Well you can amend it when we get to the station.’

  ‘Did you get a statement from Mrs Forbes-Marchant?’

  ‘Yes, she said she’d given you £500 in cash. She thought that must have been the motivation for the attack.’

  ‘Can I see the statement?’

  ‘You know you can’t. Why?’

  He took his eyes off the road. I looked away.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I lied.

  After leaving the police station I caught a minicab over to Janovitz’s office. I had the key I had taken from his drawer but I didn’t need it. The street door was unlocked, and the office door had been kicked in. The same approach to interior decoration had been employed throughout to telling effect. Box files littered the floor, their springs open or askew, and their contents fanned out on the carpet as if someone was searching for something. The small wall safe was ajar and empty. The desktop computer was only a screen; the entire hard drive unit had been removed. Thorough. It certainly did not look like amateur hour. There was no way I was going to find any photographs here. Anything that had been here was long gone.

  DS Singh had shown me some CCTV stills of our attackers at the police station. They had just got them from outside the same multi-storey car park where I had parked the Spider. I asked for copies but Singh refused, of course. My only hope was that Janovitz had managed to photograph them, or their Range Rover at Prajapati’s memorial service. Now that hope was well and truly gone, along with most of Janovitz’s office.